Sunday, March 08, 2009

Atheist Theology

Some atheists need to brush up on their theology and philosophy.

Here’s evidence that the atheist mind is capable of some level of theological thinking if only as a set of counterfactuals: This post by atheist Larry Moran touches on two themes that he repeatedly comes back to:

1) The belief that only deism is compatible with science.

2) The belief that evolution is incompatible with the concept of God.

Obviously such beliefs can only be worked out if one has in one’s head notions about the nature and purposes of Deity and its relation to the cosmos.

Deism: Science is about pattern description. Unless one projects very anthropomorphic qualities onto the Godhead, it is very difficult to see why the patterns of evolution are any more self sustaining than even the pattern of discontinuous leaps demanded by YEC creation theory. Thus under any circumstances deism is difficult to maintain, but, the thought goes, only departures from patterned normalcy are sure fire evidence of God's reality. In order to secure their respective positions both YEC and atheists may view God as a kind of powerful cosmic Godfather whose evident existence is largely manifested when He steps in here and there with acts of divine fiat defying the work-a-day pattern of a cosmos that otherwise proceeds with a quasi-autonomous normalcy. Hence the YEC position is sustained by a vehement belief in special creation 6000 years ago and the atheist position is sustained by a vehement belief in patterned normalcy. It is an irony that to secure their respective positions, YECs and atheists invoke similar concepts of Divinity and project this onto the Godhead.

Incompatibility of Evolution and Theism: Once again we have here an argument that, if it is to be worked out, must tap into theological assumptions about the nature of the Godhead and His relation to the cosmos. In particular God is often assumed to be a benevolent cosmic intervener who, in the absence of the culpability of Satan and man, would have a free run and would intervene rather than allow evolution and suffering in general. On this point many atheists and YECS would see eye-to-eye; as I have often maintained atheists and YECS have a lot of common ground in their concept of Deity

These two areas are very dangerous ground for atheists who, unless they have given some thought to the subjects of suffering, evil and theodicy, may not be theologically savvy. Atheists are on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand they can spend time with theology, become conversant with it, and attack the concept of God by exposing inconsistencies. On the other hand, if they are unwilling to dignify theology with their time they can simply declare religion to be worthless and unintelligible. But then they will remain theological dunces, and philosophically minded believers will run rings round them. So which is it to be?

These two areas are very dangerous ground for atheists who, unless they have given some thought to the subjects of suffering, evil and theodicy, may not be theologically savvy.

As an atheist I'm interested in hearing about evidence for the existence of God. In the absence of any convincing argument for the existence of God why should I care about suffering, evil, and theodicy?

Those are problems that some theists have to deal with once they accept the existence of God. They have nothing to do with the argument about whether God exists or not.

Speak for yourself Larry, but for many people the existence suffering and evil is the clinching evidence for atheism - a use of evidence that taps into implicit theological assumptions about the nature of God, assumptions that can be challenged by theodicy. Perhaps you have wisely withdrawn from this particular contention.

In your case the implicit theology is found in your belief that only deism is consistent with science, not to mention your belief in the absence of purpose. Also, your call for evidence will inevitably be accompanied by some, if prototype, conception of the object you are asking evidence for in order that you can sort out the relevant evidence from the irrelevant and thus arrive at an opinion.

There is also Bart Klink who you quote approvingly: “….the theistic conception of an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good God is hardly compatible with the process of evolution.” This quote brings to my mind a statement by David Attenborough who once said something to the effect that he found creator theism untenable in the light of a parasitic larva that develops inside the body a living caterpillar host (caution: I quote from memory)

The moral of the story is that if one is going to engage the God issue, there is no escape from theology whether you like it or not. (Ps 139:7-12). God, it seems demands that we at least think about him whether he exists or not!

I’m not in the business of telling people how wicked they must be because they don’t follow my opinion on what is clearly a tricky issue. As I have said many times before epistemic tractability is a function of ontology and consequently it's no surprise to me that this God business is tricky: far trickier, in fact, than the question of just what blend of drift and selection evolution employs. Hence I expect genuine and honest people to disagree on this matter.

THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION

“Ideas Versus Experience!" is a slogan expressing the uneasy relation between what we think the world to be and what our actual experience suggests it is. Experience makes or breaks ideas. But the reverse is also true: Well established ideas can influence the recognition, acceptance and even the perception of experience. In short there is a two way dialogue between ideas and experience. Sometimes that dialogue can turn into an argument, even a row.

The success of Science is based on a formalisation of this potentially contentious relationship as it seeks to support or refute theoretical notions by systematically comparing them with experience. In the far less formalized contexts of daily living we probably are using a similar heuristic when we display a tendency to drop ideas that lose the confrontation with experience, and retain those that win. Winning ideas, like the gladiators of the Roman arenas, live to fight another day. This Darwinian slant on the struggle for ideological survival is itself ideology that must, for consistency sake, submit itself to the very process it purports to describe. For example, it should be able to give account of the resilience of traditional theories in the face of contra indicators. And in the extreme, explanation also needs to be given of how conspiracy theorists continue to hold on to a ramifying structure of untested elaborations.

Human theoretical visions are often grand and sweeping, confidently affirming states of affairs that are far beyond immediate sensation. The vast unseen domains covered by our best theories contrasts with the limitations on human perceptual resources, resources that only allow a very sparse experimental sampling of our most ambitious ideas. Even a professional scientist only ever tests a small portion of any theoretical structure. Moreover, our theoretical concepts are ambitious enough to cover unreachable areas like the center of distant stars, sub-atomic dimensions, events long past into history, and very complex inscrutable objects like the human mind and its societies. Thus, science is metaphysical in as much as it has to admit that it covers vast domains inaccessible to testing in practice if not in principle. For the intelligent layman even the keyhole view of the experimental scientist may not be available. So whence comes the authority to affirm ideas that are often so grandiose in their sweep that they make claim to impinge upon the very meaning of life the universe and everything?

The fact is that for most of us the really big ideas diffuse through to us from our societal context, and at most these big ideas are only illuminated here and there, at a very few places, with actual direct experience of the phenomenon they conceptualise. These big ideas float around in the ether-like-media of society in the form of books, lectures, programmes, and the Internet etc, objects that the postmodernist philosophers call "texts".

For someone such as myself the battle to make sense of life was joined as soon as I was aware of mystery. But looking back it is clear to me that I haven't done an honest scientific experiment in the whole of my life. For me the effort to bring sense and integration to the complexity of life boils down to grappling with the many texts of society; These texts carry both big theoretical ideas and raw data from which ideas crystallize. These texts are compared with other texts in the search for coherence and consistency. These texts take the place and role of experiments as one tests theories using texts. These texts are in effect the experience of life. My own modest attempt at grandiose theorising has already been presented to the world. (See this blog "Physics and the Wild Web") and my excuse is that I have simply inherited the theoretical hubris of the human race.

The postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida said, "There is nothing outside the text". I think he was at least right about the primary role texts play in the life of those like myself whose instinct has been to grapple relentlessly with the riddles of life, and to seek out meaning and go where no man has gone before. But one could equally claim, "There is nothing outside the experience". For one might read the "text" of the clouds in the sky as a predictor of impending weather just as one reads socially generated symbolic configurations as the predictor of certain kinds of thought or potential experience. For the text is just as much an experience as more primeval phenomenon like thunder and lightning. Texts are part of our cosmic experience and they imperceptibly grade into the more conventional notion of experience. Where the crossover point is, is difficult to say.

Postmodernism may have got it right about the primary role of the text, but it has made one very serious mistake. Where I would radically differ from the postmodern view is that I believe the mass of social texts, if we allow them, naturally converge upon grand consistent narratives and those narratives are here to stay. And that is because these texts, I submit, are part of a world with an underlying rational integratedness and that integratedness is being revealed to us bit by bit. For revelation it is: Revelation is what we cannot discover unless God chooses that we discover it. My perceptions and reason, limited though they may be, were not self-made, they had to be discovered as gifts. These gifts are given to all of us; one can but trust and use them. Reason is a grace of Revelation. For this reason the hubris of theory making is justified.